Spriggs' 'The Traveler' 4x4 Swapped Build Thread

[Spriggs53]

Hi all,

Since I’m still new to the 4R world and this forum, so I’ll give a small intro to myself. I am from Louisiana, me and the wife like traveling a lot, and I’m a bit of a car enthusiast. I’ve been on the search for my ‘ideal’ car since I started driving, and last year I found it.



Some history on the car in question: ‘02 4Runner SR5 Sport Edition, 2wd (for now), Automatic.

I bought it in late September of 2020 with 133,000 miles on the clock from a coworker who bought it for his son as a college commute vehicle back in ‘06. Him and his son did some stuff to it during their ownership, but not much, mostly fluid changes—they did, however, add a K&N cold air intake, Bilstein B6 4600’s and an aftermarket stereo head unit. His son moved away and the PO kept it in his garage since then, running it for about a week every so often. The PO is a bit OCD, he certainly reflected that in this beautiful 4R. He knew what he had and he treasured it as such; he kept a detailed log of everything he did to it from the time he purchased it till he sold it. The car is in spectacular condition for its age; no rust, or any other major problems. He sold it to me needing the valve cover gasket job and timing belt job needing to be done, so the price he felt most comfortable with reflected that. Regardless, I consider it a very reasonable price.


Current Build - October 2021

Engine:
• K&N cold air intake

Suspension:
• Bilstein - 5100 shocks front and rear
• OME - 881/890 (2”-2.5” of lift)

Wheel & brakes:
• 231mm Tundra brakes
• American Racing - AR23, 16x8, 0 offset,
• Kumho - Roadventure A/T 305/70R16
• White dice valve stem caps

Lighting:
• BxBuild - black projector headlights w/ RGB halo & corner lights
• Nilight - 20”, 36” bar lights & Adzoon Pod lights
• Yellow fog lights

Exterior misc:
• Arksen - 64” roof rack
• Spiker Engineering - hood struts

Audio:
• Boss Audio - NX524 300w 4way, NX654 400w 4way, BV9384NV head unit, Sound Ordinance amplifier

Interior misc:
• Raingler - cargo area roof net
• Outbound Nevada - cargo area window Molle Panels
• Ultragauge - OBDII scanner/gauges
• LED instrument & A/C clusters
• Homemade cargo area platform

Exhaust:
• MagnaFlow - Overland Exhaust

Driveline:
• 4x4 swap (future)

Since my ownership:
Disclaimer: most of the past stuff won’t be too in depth as its been a hot minute since I did some of it and some of it was also done kinda rushed so there will be minimal photos, I've also forgotten quite a bit. Being as that I live in Louisiana I tend to run a bit on the cheaper side of things, so don’t judge some of my choices as far as products, I am also pretty comfortable working on just about any vehicle, I know cars well enough, but I’m also still a little bit of a rookie so don’t judge how I may do some things… that being said I’m always open to constructive criticism.

I have done quite a lot to it since I bought it, I kind’ve wish I would have documented everything and put together a build thread sooner, but I wasn’t really thinking earlier on so here we are.

I look forward to participating in the community!

 

[spartacus]

Nice truck, looks good. Keep a look out for parts truck on Craigslist etc as donor for a swap.
Here is a good thread.
COB's 4Runner Timeline (Pic Heavy) - Toyota 4Runner Forum - Largest 4Runner Forum

 

[DPenner]

Beautiful truck...(and neat house too)...

 

[Spriggs53]

My timing in making this build thread was bad, the holidays have been chaotic. I’ve been neglecting updating this at all, the time just hasn’t been there for me to do it.

I want to keep this relatively linear, so I will do a quick summary of everything I’ve done since I bought it, starting with my first mod. I’m not gonna get too in depth with everything, for one because my memory is lacking on a lot of stuff. I’ll try to give enough detial though. I want to have a decent record of my work with this truck.

10/22/20
My first mod and the first thing I did at all was I upgraded the sound system in it. I upgraded the head unit, speakers and added an amp. I went with Boss Audio for the manufacturer, no real reason other than they looked to be pretty decent for the price. I put 300w in the front and 250w in the rear, both front and rear are 4way, I didn’t want to bother with a sub right away, I may do that in the future if I feel so inclined.

This door speaker mounts only have three screws, the speakers I got have four screw mounts. Instead of trying to find some sort of adapter I just modified the current mounts. The front speakers got close enough to the original mounting holes, the rear, however, was a different story. The speakers I got were slightly too large, I think the originals are 4.5”(?) and the ones I got were something like 5.25”, I can’t remember. So, I just drilled straight into the mount and used screws to secure it down to the mount. Pretty redneck, I know, but I am in redneck country and to me its not worth spending the extra buck to find something that does the same thing.

Luckily the PO had an after market pioneer head unit already installed, but it was one of your basic units. I say luckily because he already had all the wiring set up for an aftermarket head unit, so I didn’t have to worry about much, just slipped the Boss double din head unit in and hooked everything up from there.

One thing I didn’t realize was that when you hook up such powerful speakers, you kinda need something to up the power to them, and that head unit alone wasn’t going to do it. After ai hooked everything up, I played music and it sounded atrocious. Like, two raptors doing the hateful naughty act... it was bad. I contacted the Crutchfield guys and they quickly informed me that an amp was needed to accompany that setup. I bit the bullet and got a sound ordinance amp, I don’t really know the specs on it though (shame on me, I know). After I got that set up I ran over to some local audio guys—which I should’ve visited sooner—and they did all the tuning on the amp, even provided me with some good speaker wire, because at this point everything was in shambles in the interior and I didn’t have long enough speaker wire for the rear, so I could easily rerun wire for all the speakers. Honestly, for a modding nooby, this job wasn’t hard, but on the other hand, it wasn’t easy either. I wish I would have done more research going into it, but I guess sometimes the way to learn is the hard way.

That sums up mod #1.

12/30/20
Second mod was adding driving lights. This was pretty straight forward and easy to do, although anything electrical makes me nervous, no matter what it is. I bought an Amazon brand 24” bar light and two pod lights for roughly $50, and at this point in time I had put an order in for some sick headlights by BxBuilt, but I wasn’t going to get them for awhile, and in my opinion, the original lighting was not great, I wanted some good lights for late highway driving or high beam assists for back roads. The outout was honestly pretty good for the price, nothing extravagant, but also nothing wimpy either.

Low beams

With driving lights on. My highs might have been on as well.
Not bad for the price.

Mod #2 done

01/09/21
Next up, because Inhad heard a lot that the ball joints failing were a huge issue in higher miles, I wanted this tackled fairly quickly. I’m kinda embarrassed about this part, bit what can you do... I bought a kit off of eBay that included everything. I was getting a shacking in the steering and I figured it can’t hurt to go ahead and redo everything. I didn’t really have a place to work on it at my own house, so I took it up to the in-law’s house and he helped me do the whole job. We replaced the upper and lower balls joints, both inner and outer tie rod ends, and stabilizer bars. As we’re tearing everything down for replacement, we’re looking at the upper and lower balls joints and they really don’t look bad at all, which struck as odd since it had 130k miles on it at this point. I told the PO about this after all was said and done, because we still stay in touch, he informed me that when he bought the truck that Toyota did a complete overhaul of it before selling it, so the upper and lower ball joints were actually fairly new-ish, relatively speakings. That made me feel real dumb, because we just replaced good toyota ball joints with some ball joints off of eBay... which were... not great. But whatever. I ended up re-replacing the lower ball joints with oem later on.